Inside Google's Plan To Stop Apple From Getting Serious About Search

Google has worried for years that Apple would one day expand its internet search technology, and has been working on ways to prevent that from happening. From a report: For years, Google watched with increasing concern as Apple improved its search technology, not knowing whether its longtime partner and sometimes competitor would eventually build its own search engine. Those fears ratcheted up in 2021, when Google paid Apple around $18 billion to keep Google's search engine the default selection on iPhones, according to two people with knowledge of the partnership, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The same year, Apple's iPhone search tool, Spotlight, began showing users richer web results like those they could have found on Google.

Google quietly planned to put a lid on Apple's search ambitions. The company looked for ways to undercut Spotlight by producing its own version for iPhones and to persuade more iPhone users to use Google's Chrome web browser instead of Apple's Safari browser, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The New York Times. At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple's control of the iPhone by leveraging a new European law intended to help small companies compete with Big Tech. Google's anti-Apple plan illustrated the importance that its executives placed on maintaining dominance in the search business. It also provides insight into the company's complex relationship with Apple, a competitor in consumer gadgets and software that has been an instrumental partner in Google's mobile ads business for more than a decade.

Google is how Internet cancer looks like

[sinij]

We need more competition in search to stop on-going enshittification. I don't want to have to explain to my kids that when I was younger search didn't used to rape your privacy and push you into mental crisis and conspiracies.

Re:

[sosume]

People always bitch about Microsoft abusing the market but the truly evil corp is Google

Re:

[echo123]

People always bitch about Microsoft abusing the market but the truly evil corp is Google

Microsoft/Activision/Skype/Github/LinkedIn/Nuance, (with an 11.5% stake in Comcast), is plenty evil, and for a long, long time to come. Meanwhile others have stepped up to the plate of EViL, so as to compete for the crown.

Re:

[Locke2005]

Remember: Google abandoned their "Do no evil" motto in April of 2018. Since then, they have been totally free to be as evil as they want to be!

OF COURSE Google is going to do everything it can to maintain it's monopoly and maximize revenue!

Do not be (merely) evil

[goombah99]

Monetize evil.
But this slashdot is propaganda. Google needs badly to show it's not a monopoly and to define the word search to cover a bigger market place of ideas to dilute its monopoly appearance.

Google isn't afraid of apple they are afraid of congressional legislation

So phony dramas like this are going to be seeded into the news by google

Re:

[david.emery]

What Google dropped from that motto was just the word "Don't".

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Well, if Apple does publish a serious competitor, I predict it'll start out great while it takes a large chunk out of Google's market share, first from iProducts &, if they're smart, on openly available web search. It'll be better than Google, not because they'll have better algorithms or technologies but because they'll simply have to make the search results less shitty than Google's by not pushing so much paid/sponsored junk in the results. Once Apple's market share grab has stabilised, they'll be und

I find it stupefying

[93 Escort Wagon]

It is incredible that Google finds it profitable to annually pay Apple 18 billion dollars just to be the default search engine on Apple products. I've heard it before, but it floors me every time.

Re:

[Tarlus]

So when I switch the default search engine on a brand new Apple device, I like to think of it as a waste of Google's money.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

I don't hate my privacy, I just don't believe it exists. For anyone. Privacy is nothing more than an illusion. If somebody is determined to get your data, they will.

And I did buy an Android device. Much cheaper, performs as well or better than iDevices.

Paid to be the good guy

[meandmatt]

I know Apple retains data like Google and Microtik. So I get a kick out of how Apple gets to be the good guy by simply being paid not to be the bad guy. But for the time being I do prefer Apple flying the banner of user privacy.

Re:

[SleepingEye]

Except Apple doesn't give a crap about your privacy either. They regularly "sell" your user data either by ads, by their own ad suggestions in the various content stores they run, or by selling you out to Google. So you did phrase your last sentence there well: it's only flying a banner.

Re:

[meandmatt]

Exactly. Fully agree. I don't trust them any more than Google, Its just that as long as they are boasting privacy as a feature, there are some advantages for the time being like private relay. And Apple helps stop Google and others from collecting data directly. (So that no one can profit without Apples permission so that Apple can get a cut.) And this in turn for the time being is better than Google having 100% visibility on all 100% of my device directly. Lastly when Apple goes back

web results in spotlight is shit

[liquidpele]

The same year, Apple's iPhone search tool, Spotlight, began showing users richer web results like those they could have found on Google.

Does anyone actually use that garbage? I assumed it was just filler to make spotlight look less shitty when it couldn't find anything. Maybe they should have the indexer use more cpu, oh wait it already pegs it at 100% every damn day.

Cliches

[Locke2005]

Intenet Explorer: The world's most popular browser to use for installing Google Chrome!

Safari: The world's second second most popular browser to use for installin Google Chrome!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[SleepingEye]

Except you're wrong. Even if you were right, you're still wrong: Chrome has the reputation for being the fastest browser for the average user, and that's not going to change lol.

Google on my phone

[sit1963nz]

LOL... NO !!! I will never have spyware from Google, Facebook, Amazon on any of my devices.

Re:

[ACForever]

enjoy your apple spyware then

Scott McNealy was prescient

[sconeu]

You have zero privacy, anyway. Get over it.

-- Jan 1999